Your preschooler will have so much fun making this coffee filter leaves craft. The leaves are easy to make — you just have to color them and spay with water 🙂
Supplies Needed:
-coffee filters
-markers
-spray bottle (with water)
-scissors
How To Make Coffee Filter Leaves:
The first thing I did was draw leaf patterns on the coffee filters. You can trace leaf designs that you like if you do not want to free hand draw it. I recommend drawing with a marker, not a pen. I tried a pen for one and you could see the ink outline, whereas the outlines I drew with a marker disappeared.
Then my son and I colored in our leaves. It is important to use markers that easily wash off of surfaces because the color will bleed through the coffee filter. Don’t worry about how your leaf looks because once you spray it with water, the colors will run together and any design you had will be gone.
After coloring the leaves, I cut them out. I wish I had made my stems a little thicker, but it turned out okay.
Now it is time to spray the leaves! This is my son’s favorite part 🙂 Once you begin spraying the coffee filters with water, the color will immediately bleed onto your surface. We chose to spray ours on the grass. If you don’t have an outdoor area that you can make a mess on, then make sure that whatever surface you are using is cleanable, or put wax paper under your coffee filters to catch the run off. We learned that the more water your spray, the less vivid the colors are. Experiment with lightly versus heavily spraying your leaves and see which way you like best.
We left our leaves on the grass to dry in the sun. They dried in about 20 minutes (it was a warm morning). They turned out pretty neat 🙂 We are happy with our leaves and can’t wait to make more of them. I want to make a leaf garland to hang in our house!
If you would like some fun, fall-themed books to read after you make your coffee filter leaves, then check out my FALL post.
More Fall Fun!
Looking for more fall activities? Check out my APPLE post, which has book suggestions, STEM activities, and a find-the-differences worksheet. My son also recently made PUMPKIN FIZZ, which was a super fun science experiment to tie in with our fall-theme.